I was 6 weeks old when I first went to school! My mother had given up her job as Head of Department in a London comprehensive. She pictured herself staying at home with me and driving us out and about in her little MG Midget sports car, my carry cot wedged between the tonneau cover and the front seats – no seat belts! But a desperate phone call from a local headmaster sent her scurrying back to the classroom and I went with her, tucked under her arm.
I’ve been told I used to crawl from classroom to classroom, sweet pea like, being scooped up and sat on the work benches to “help out”. The boys used to look after me at break – it was always the boys who wanted to look after the baby!
Growing up in schools, with my mother later becoming a headmistress, I was determined I would never teach, so after A levels I hot-footed it off to South America where I found myself – teaching. Working in a home for street kids in Paraguay was eye-opening after my privileged childhood, with the shock of realising that the kids I taught during the day were working the streets at night. If ever there was a learning curve, I climbed the steepest one there – child development in its rawest form. I even found myself in prison visiting 8 year olds each week.
Spanish and Portuguese at Bristol University allowed me back to South America three years later, this time to work on the Buenos Aires Herald newspaper, where, each night, I proof read and corrected the English and, each morning, the Argentine editor came in and changed it all back because he liked his English better!
Law conversion followed, mostly because I wanted to continue coxing university rowing teams. Having to organise, motivate and challenge 8 men to push themselves beyond all imaginable pain limits set me in good stead for six years as a solicitor in the commercial litigation department at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. It was here, as more and more of my friends started families and began to panic about what they should and shouldn’t be doing, and with no time to find the information they wanted, that I had an “epiphany” moment.
They say when you start a business you should begin where you have some experience. Law, education and magazines seemed a good place to start and the result is Eds Up!